Oriana: The Unauthorized Accounts
by Denizen1
Summary: A mysterious stranger arrives in the kingdom of Oriana, sent by agencies unknown to survey its land and culture, as well as chronicle the true version of the events that occurred in the film. In the process, a very different tale than what was previously shown is revealed. New chapter 'Grumper's Tale: Part 3. '
1. Introduction

_As I first set pen to paper, __I begin my commissioned task of documenting the life and history of the realm known as Oriana. It is to be an extensive, first-hand survey of the land, its people, its technology and its culture, and its native flora and fauna. I have agreed to perform all these things with the assurance that the information collected be solely for education, and not as a prelude to hostile action. Reading this, a potential conqueror will find no details of Oriana's defenses, no weakness for them to exploit. I am not a spy, and I do not aid in invasion. _

_Monumental, I imagine that it will require many a year to complete this record to the satisfaction of my sponsor. I have accepted this task with unbridled enthusiasm. I, like all others of my culture, value knowledge, and no knowledge worth possessing can be gotten without some sacrifice, whether that loss be time, effort or life. We must always give our fullest, for greater glory, for posterity._

_There is one individual that I have been requested to look into most thoroughly. I realize that there have been many accounts of this individual's life, though like the histories of many famous (and infamous) figures, he is a figure more of legend than fact, and like all legends, there have been embellishments, exaggerations, distortions, contradictions, and confusions attached to his name and reputation. _

_An official history of the events pertaining to this man has been published by Royal Decree and is publicly available for the perusal of all citizens of Oriana to read. I have studied this account extensively, and a full copy will be included with this report when it is completed. However, my employer has been determined to find the true facts of the matter, and I have been fortunate enough to have been selected for this duty. Since the individual in question is no longer present, I must content myself with finding other means of uncovering the truth, such as those surviving individuals to who had spoken with him before his disappearance and attempt to interview them should they be able and willing._

_Long has my preparation been, gathering the necessary items for my journey and honing my talents for the potential hazards. I have been informed that my means of travel have been arranged, and all of travel documents will pass the highest scrutiny. Like any researcher, I must endeavor to minimize my contact with the subjects of my research. Fortunately I am equipped with a singular quality that will allow me to do just that._

_I set out now, fully equipped, determined to find those surviving individuals who had crossed paths with the individual and collect their accounts of what actually occurred those few short years ago before their memories fade, or they pass from this life. _

_Pray that my efforts will bear fruit, and that I will return safely to your side with all the requested information gathered, sound in both mind and mind after traversing these strange domains._

_As to my identity, it is not important for the purposes of this document. I am a part of a greater whole, less of a person and more of a voice of truth._


	2. Arrival at the Obsidan Plains

_Desolation, my employer. That's what this place says to me. Desolation. It is so dark in this lonely corner of the realm that I have vowed to study that even though it has been only hours, it makes me long to once again see the blue skies of the land of my origin, for green grass and shafts of sunlight upon reflective ponds. _

_There is so much blackness. I walk across blackness. Sometimes I imagine that I am in the depths of a blank void perhaps under a polar sea or in the swirling tides of intergalactic space, and only the surety of my footsteps lends me the impression of solidarity. I have to remind myself that the blackness is merely that of the obsidian glass that makes up this blackened desert. __The clouds above are heavy and black, promising no sun, yet also no rain, the air is shrouded by a low dark mist that trails about my feet. The mist has a curious odor - redolent of burnt almonds. It would be almost pleasant to me, if I hadn't recalled that some poisons also have the smell of almonds. _

_The wasteland though which I travel is not completely without feature. Occasionally I will find a single, defiant column, its pale surface winking to me in the half-light. Perhaps once long ago, there is a thriving city that might have rivaled the glories of the Capital; a place of shining marble brick and glorious colonnades extending for miles. High aqueducts could have carried water to the parched throats of the citizenry. Every square and street crossing would have had its fountain, or its monument or statue. It would have housed verdant gardens, still pools, and ingeniously constructed halls of learning, culture, and industry. All gone now if it never existed.  
_

_In the distance I can just barely perceive the tapering spikes of the mountains; hideous and brooding like a columns of squatting giants. There amongst their feet I was told that I would find the Panopticon.  
_

_Everything is broken glass, and mist, and sky with not the slightest bit of loom to give the land a potential for life. I know how obsidian is formed, and this causes me to wonder where did the heat to make it come from? What tremendous inferno was capable of causing all this? A desert of black glass large enough to swallow cities? Was it the result of some sort of unimaginable destructive weapon wielded by the ancestors of the __Orianians__? On occasion I will pass what appear to be impact craters, and my imagination will turn to fanciful places. What fell here? Was there a war in the heavens? Did strange deities fall in disgrace like blazing comets, impacting the ground and turning paradise to black glass and ash? Perhaps the craters are a natural phenomenon? The result of trapped gases escaping as the sand fused? I cannot say, my employer, for I am still a newcomer, with little knowledge of the field of geology, and there is much that I must learn before I can even hazard a guess._

_Despite the austerity of my new surroundings, I can be assured of one thing. My secrecy has been maintained. The noise of my arrival has gone unnoticed both by local authorities and the more ''abstract'' powers. And yet I am still not beyond all danger. Before leaving, some of my associates advised that I equip myself with a weapon, but at the time I declined, insisting that such devices would lead to only to trouble and aggression. Now I am second-guessing my decision in regards to not carrying a side-arm. It is too late now, I remind myself. In the absence of force, I shall have to rely upon cunning and my own unique talents. In my heart I believe that this is the best way. If the knowledge I gain was earned through risk, does that not make it all the more valued?_

_I must cease my writing for now, employer. Beyond the foothills of those distant spiky mountains, I can just make out my intended destination._

* * *

Tens of thousands of obsidian bricks comprised the eight-towered fortress prison, an imposing structure surrounded by a broad moat filled with dark, stagnant and polluted liquid. It stood built upon eight foothills, and spread in an octagonal formation. Even when placed next to the mountains, it seemed to dominate. It resembled nothing so much as a hellish crown, with towering walls of dusty black glass contoured with strange and meaningless projections in its mainly sheer planes.

In the perpetual twilight of the kingdom's borderlands, a lone figure walked across the moated bridge with unhurried steps. Two guards stood ramrod-straight to either side of the prison's sole entrance with their ceremonial pikes held in steady hands. In stark contrast to their surroundings, the guards were wearing tunics of a bright blue, crushed velvet, emblazoned with the six yellow stripes of the Palace Guard. They wore the jester-like skullcaps of the ceremonial army, and their expressions were determined, disciplined. Their gazes were fixed at the horizon, unwavering.

As the figure approached them, the two men found themselves possessed of a sudden headache, a blurring of the senses, and a wave of dizziness. One of the men feel to his knees, with symptoms common to the suffering epileptic.

Even if they turned to look at the passing figure, they would stare straight through it as though it were not there.

The figure passed through the courtyard of hexagonal obsidian slabs, dull with the passing of generations of feet. The phantom then entered the entrance at the base of one of the obsidian towers, just left of the prison's smithy.

From there the figure turned right down a black stone corridor glistening with moisture from the land's trapped mist and lit by strange orange lanterns set high up near the ceiling that cast long, angular shadows. A single door waited at the end of the corridor, dented with flakes of rust contaminating whatever symbol it once bore. It had been added to the frame recently, as the hinges were newly forged steel.

* * *

The prison was the product of a less civilized era of Oriana's past, a relic from a time when barbaric tyrants needed prisons to keep their legions of dissidents and suspected traitors. Now the vast prison held only one prisoner. That person occupied one of the eight tower cells. It was as much protection as it was imprisonment. In that lonely fortress tower cell, the prison's sole prisoner was writing. He filled volumes worth of pages with his straight, precise lines, occasionally dipping his quill pen into the ink pot at his elbow.

The prisoner was editing his memoirs. He stopped only to eat, sleep, and to knock upon the door to request more ink for his inkwell, another quill as the one he had been using had eroded to dullness, and always was he requesting more paper.

The cell in which he spent his days was not spacious. Like the prison, the chamber was octagonal, and constructed from bricks of solid obsidian. The only furniture was the cot, a dresser, a bookshelf with a dozen volumes on it, two ancient wing-back chairs and the writing desk. The second chair was mainly there for interrogations of prisoners by a guard, but now sat unoccupied across from the desk. There was also a low table between the chairs with a clay tea kettle, some cups and saucers.

With a flourish, his quill completed the page's line. He nodded at the drying words and smiled.

"Chancellor Grumper?" a voice asked.

The man known as Grumper turned from his writing, one eyebrow raised. It appeared that he now had a guest, who was standing close to the locked door. _What a truly rare occasion._ At first he feared it would be an assassin or one of the less disciplined guards attempting to harass him in one of their drunken moods, but the stranger's appearance didn't lend that impression at all. He should have been questioning how the visitor had managed to enter. Had he been so engaged in writing that he hadn't heard the door open? But strangely he dismissed any notion of questioning this scene.

"That, I am no longer," he gave a slight smile. "Though I thank you for the kindness of your address. Please, just call me Grumper. It's what everyone calls me now. Not 'chancellor', not 'Your Grace", just Grumper. It's the name I was born with, and it's the one I will likely die with."

"Grumper," the figure nodded and stepped into the light.

Grumper turned his head quizzically at the visitor. _How very strange,_ he thought. _The more I look at this person, the less I see. How very odd. Yet I'm not bothered by this. I feel at ease._

Shrugging, he asked, "So what do I call you?"

"My name is not important," the stranger replied. "Only my mission, which is why I have come all this way."

"And that would be to what? To kill me? Perhaps you're going to smother me, or slip me a poison pill." Grumper smiled, and went on to say. "It would spare the Princess the burden of arranging for my trial."

"No," the stranger replied. "That's the last thing I want. And from what I know, there has been no trial scheduled, not this year, nor next year or any year after that."

"Hm, a pity," Grump frowned. "Still the distractions of a trial would keep me from my true work."

"Your writing?" the stranger gestured at the pages in front of the middle-aged man.

"Yes," the older man replied. "My memoirs, notes, essays, a novel...all that's left of me now. Words filling pages that no one will read. I have so much time now just to think."

"Grumper," the stranger said. "There isn't much time. I too am an admirer of knowledge, and that's why I've come here. Not to kill you, but to learn the truth from you. There are others who desire this information, and that is why I was sent to you this night."

"Truth?" Grumper gave a slight chuckle. "I've served under three monarchs, and each one has said the same thing: truth is whatever you have the power to make real."

"Do you believe that?" the stranger asked.

"I go over the subject of my personal beliefs quite a bit in these essay I've written, but unfortunately I don't imagine that you have the time to read them."

"It would fill me with the greatest joy to read about your thoughts, but that is true. I have little time as it is. I've come here only to learn about one particular subject."

"And that would be?"

"Grumper," the stranger began. "What can you tell me about the Duke of Zill?"


	3. A Bargain Struck

_ Success, my employer. I have located the former chancellor of Oriana, the man known as Grumper._

_He looks so much older than his portrait. Records of his birth date indicated that he should be slightly past middle age, but it is clear that the years have not been kind to him. His hair has grayed, and are somewhat tangled and unkempt. His pale blue eyes still have the mischievous sparkle of youth to them, though they have also become bloodshot and watery perhaps from . His face is covered with stubble, that like his blonde hair, has given way largely to gray. His frame, once plumb and robust, is now gaunt and sickly._

_He now speaks, and I shall endeavor to record every word he says. _

"Ah," Grumper leaned back in his chair, his smile vanished as he took a breath. "Somehow I knew that is what you wanted."

"You are the oldest person to have known the Duke while he was alive," the stranger said, taking a seat and placing a hand on the desk's surface.

"And I can tell you most everything: who he was, what his childhood was like, how the years and tragedies changed him into what everyone knew him as," Grumper replied. "Yes, you could learn enough to satisfy a scholar's appetite from what I could tell you. But the question remains: what do I get in return?"

The stranger looked around and said, "I cannot spirit you from this cell. Only the Princess could do such a thing, and she will not."

"I didn't expect you to," Grumper whispered. "Even if I could escape, there's no place I could go. Everyone knows my face. Everyone knows what I did. If I walked out of here, I wouldn't survive a week before some citizen recognized me, slit my throat and left me for the mizzards in a filthy alley. For a hundred days, I was the right-hand of the Duke and no one will forget that."

Grumper paused, staring up at the dusty ceiling before turning back to the stacks of parchment lying on the writing desk. "If you can do this one thing for me, and this is my ardent wish. I will tell you everything you want to know, about the Duke, about myself and everything that happened, but only if you do this one thing for me."

"Yes?" the stranger replied. "Anything.:

Grumper stood up and produced a stack of paper from one of the desk's drawers. "Take this, my life's work. It's only a matter of time before the Princess enters a lull where the distractions of rulership are thrown to the wayside, and she recalls that I am here. If I am to be executed, then what I have spent these long years writing might well be used to light my cremation fire."

Tenderly, almost reverently, the former chancellor of the kingdom of Oriana tied a length of leather cord together around the stack of notes and handed it across the desk.

The stranger took the stacks, eyes scanning the front pages. "You trust me with these?" the stranger asked.

"I have no one else now."

"I will see that these are properly preserved, and reproduced for the perusal of interested minds," the phantom said, and placed the paper in a leather bound satchel.

"It would be my sincerest hope. Now my half of the bargain," Grumper said with a slight sardonic chuckle. You wanted to know the truth, and I shall tell you. For tonight you shall be my final confessor, and none of my sins will be left unspoken,"

The stranger took the other chair, sat straight attentively as the former chancellor told his tale.


	4. Grumper's Tale: Part 1

I came from a wealthy, caring family. Our estate was located on a rare patch of soil, untainted by the poisons that normally contaminated so many parts of the kingdom; valuable, the envy of its neighbors and the pride of all who called it home.

Our family fortune was based on our orchards, and what we made with them. It required skilled workers to make the high quality cider, and tend and pluck from the trees. I remember also how the gentle breezes from the property's lake would rustle the apple trees, and how every branch would bend in the same direction in a synchronized motion like the arm movements of graceful dancers. We had one vital tree in particular in the very center, and from that tree's apples came the most delicious of the orchid's fruit; the most exquisite ciders and brandies. That wan sunlight shining through the leaves of that tree was what I most remember. That same light haunts my pleasant dreams and colors all the times of my life when I was most happy.

It's all gone now, of course. The last I heard the estate's new owners brought down the trees so that the wood could be put to other uses. Vast swathes of them hacked down. What trees remained were left for the hordes of burrowing insects; their fruit was left unharvested and the weight dragged down the limbs.

My family lived in a three-story manor constructed a hundred years before I was born. We had all the amenities; some galvanic illumination for dark nights,, heated water that was relatively free of pollutants to bathe in, and best of all, a mechanical lift built by some mysterious ancestor in my family line ages past. It was immensely helpful in the lifting of heavy furniture from the first floor all the way to the attic when we needed it. It was also something that we enjoyed showing to our few visitors and guests. When my father became virtually bedridden later in life, I was told that the lift made his movements through the manor easier. The thought still gives me some comfort; that in his final days he found some relief from the illness even in a small way.

Of all of the manor's one hundred and twenty-three rooms, my favorite was the library, where the walls were covered from floor to ceiling by shelves packed nearly to overflowing with volumes. I recall the many times when I was young how I would use the tracked stepladder, with its brass wheels, to glide around the circumference of the great domed room. I made a game of it. I would close my eyes, and gripping the ladder I would let it slide around the room; where it landed, I would open my eyes and read whichever book my eye lay upon. I realize that it may now sound strange, but as I said I was young and foolish then.

The profits from the orchards paid for my education at the university, and after graduation I sought employment at the palace as a scribe, only for me to be offered the position of assistant to the Chancellor himself.

I recall the day with some clarity. I was staring out the window in my quarters, that had been newly freshened and prepared after the endless years of studies at the University. After having done so much, learned so much, at such a frantic pace for so long, the return to the calm estate seemed to place me in a malaise. I felt unsure of myself, asking myself constantly if there was anything more that needed to be done. I needed tasks to occupy my restless mind. During the weeks wherein I awaited reply from the numerous businesses that I had sent my applications and credentials to, I attempted other means of filling the endless hours. Often I would go down to the first floor, seeking out the house servants and offered to help them in the cleaning of the silverware. I went to my father and asked if he needed help with organizing his ledgers concerning the family business.

"Grumper," my father said. "When you were away for ten years, we managed to survive. And you've always been a little too short for harvest work, you know that. We're all proud of what you've already accomplished, and now is your chance to rest."

Sighing, I returned to my room, and the writing desk it contained. I opened a favorite book and began to copy phrases and passages that intrigued me. It helped keep my penmanship sharp and kept my intellect keen. It was then that I was alerted by one of the servants' bell; the one used only when important mail had arrived.

Running downstairs, I took the sealed envelope marked with the yellow crown seal from the waiting manservant. Ripping it open with a single rip, my eyes scanned the document and with every word my heart rate increased.

It informed that due to my outstanding academic performance, that I was to prepare immediately for travel as I was to begin my duties in the service of the Chancellor and His Royal Majesty as soon as I arrived. My travel and housing had already been arranged. The letter stated that my offer for employment would be immediately accepted after an interview with the Chancellor, as well as the presentation of certain genealogical records. The letter made it clear that I was to bring originals, not documents copied by hand.

Thrilled, I made my departure plans immediately. Unthinking in the excitement I located the requested documents in the manor's library, and took them with me in my satchel along with several books that I had been meaning to read. As I awaited the arrival of my transport, I plucked an apple or two and placed it also within the satchel, thinking that should I grow hungry on the way I would have sustenance.

They sent a carriage for me, and it arrived two days after I had received the letter. It was a grand thing of gilded wheels and chromed roof. Tiny galvanic lights set within ornate lanterns hung from each of the carriage's four corners. The driver was attired in the motley garb of the Royal Guard, and he opened the door to an interior of oxblood leather and polished, scintillant wood. The beast of burden was a fine creature, much larger and healthier than the lean and skinny creatures that we used on the estate for the tilling of the soil and the transporting of fruit. Its haunches were muscular, the sheen of its scales was lustrous as though they had been polished, the ivory of its curling horns was gleaming. It was a proud creature, it snorted with gusto, and eyed me as though I were an insect.

_Who are you, little man?_ It seemed to say. _Who am I that I should bear you to where you are going? I was bred for the mighty, not the miniscule._

I stood there, awestruck. I must have looked foolish to the driver, who gestured again for me to enter. Snapping out of the stupor, I stepped into that interior and rode in the carriage to the palace where my life's work would begin.

The ride seemed go by quickly, though it must have been half a day at least. I stared out the window at all the glorious landscapes and settlements that made Oriana the greatest kingdom that the world had ever known. I had traveled a bit as a student, but now I saw it all as with new eyes: the Windmill Forests, the Prismatic Labyrinth stretching for miles in all its bewildering complexity, the Water Fields where every surface was a puddle, the town of Topaz where it was said that the statues spoke, the Plain of Misdirection. Each place had its uniqueness, and its beauty.

Yes, my confessor, on the outside Oriana is very beautiful.

I remember getting my first look of the Palace. It stood barely atop the mountainous block of stone known as the Throne, a golden ornament clamped on a stone pedestal. It is said that the fortress was raised so high upon its bastion of rock that it stood above the very clouds themselves. Not true, of course. The smog that was Oriana's air still lingered there, surrounding it like a ring of mud but due to the fortress's great height, most of its environs stood in the direct sunlight for most of the time. Still, the air around the Palace is cleaner, fresher and less filled with particulates. Afflictions of the lungs is almost unheard among those who call the Palace home.

There was only a single road ran from the bottom of its bastion of rock to the front gates, and it was a shallow cleft that meanders up the side of the mountain, zigzagging at barely reasonable angles. It was this cleft that formed a crude spiraling path for the carriage I was in to ascend the mountain, providing just enough traction for ascent.

I recall the bounce and shake as that shining-silver carriage rattled up the winding road. The driver snapped the reins; the beast of burden screaming in protest. Just out the window was the rocky chasm; if hooves had slipped, the carriage would have tipped three thousand feet down.

Finally the carriage stopped and I stood before those gilded gates that I saw only in books before.

The Palace of the Throne of the Kingdom of Oriana. It was the center of our nation, the center of our world, the center of power and authority since recorded history had begun.

The Palace, the center of everything!

And it was there, at the center of all things, where occurred the most tragic events of my life.


	5. Grumper's Tale: Part 2

The sun never set upon the Throne is what they say. Looking upon it for the first time, I could easily believe it. Already the largest single building in existence, the palace was constructed of interlocking, cyclopean slabs of white marble, forming squared sections that resembled an upturned labyrinth when viewed from above. Rising from it for two hundred hand-spans were the sparkling domes and minarets made of polished quartzite and roofed with tiles of purple travertine. From a distance those slabs of white marble comprising the palace's walls appeared smooth, when actuality they were carved with images of the ancient kings, the ten thousand saints, the holiest of concubines, the chastisers of the false doctrines, and half a hundred martyrs from history. Its golden surfaces caught the sun's rays and seemed to be infused by them. The sun was a constant, never blocked out by the smog as would be the case in any other part of the kingdom.

Once the Duke conjectured that perhaps there were other types of worlds, ones that weren't flat or as malformed as ours. He had speculations of worlds that developed as rings and orbited their suns in circular or elliptical motions. He imagined worlds that were pyramids, and ones where they were spherical or cubed these too would also orbit their suns. He had such imagination. He had even come up with equations describing how the physics of those imaginary worlds would operate, how life would develop on those worlds, what the sky would like, and so many other things.

I dearly miss those discussions. I cannot express... No, I will continue. We have not much time.

* * *

Leaving the carriage I crossed a small courtyard lined with enough chrome to build a small industrial town. Upon making my first step, the courtyard became a blazing haze of white light - so great was its reflective surface in that constant sun. I remember covering my eyes at the sight of it, and having to be lead across by expert guardsmen.

I was led across the courtyard's length to the massive, main entrance - an onyx archway standing twenty feet high. Deeper within, set in depressions in the walls stood giant, twin statues of titans, their muscled bulk holding up the arch, while their feet crushed vaguely humaniod creatures with reptilian scales, flippered hands and porcine noses.

After my satchel was searched by a weary-looking doorman and returned to me, I was lead into the receiving hall. It was a brilliantly lit chamber of dazzling white tiles whose edges and corners glinted with polished bronze. The glossy white walls were hung with garlands of shining ribbons of the same white color. The first half of the chamber was a wide, shallow pool of clear water with a single staircase gently curving and spiraling upwards toward a shared ceiling upon which was set a huge sun-face of gold - a circular pattern resembling nothing more than a circle of serpentine sunrays framing a stylized representation of the sun, the face of the Creator whose face seemed to smile down upon visitor to the Palace like an old friend.

I stood in awe before I was led up that stairway down a hallway that could have accommodated a parading regiment of servants, vassals, and guardsmen. Even before the Princess came to power, the Palace was a monument to excess; crossing the border into garishness from the moment one entered the chamber. From then on, room after room of nauseating ostentation passed before me, until the hairs on the back of my head rose. There was enough wealth displayed in a single chamber that was easily equal to an entire year's profit of apples from my family's orchards.

Eventually, after having my senses bedazzled by the myriad surfaces of gold and porcelain, I was eventually led the royal trophy room where I was told to wait. In a room whose high ceiling rose to nearly sixty feet above the floor, there were displayed on oak-paneled the severed heads of a multitude of beasts, all of them perfectly proposed. During my lengthy wait I counted at least six hundred before giving up. Where there were not a head mounted, there was a tapestry - at least a hundred - each detailing the past exploits and heroics of the hunters of the royal family. It was a proud tradition of the monarchs to pursue the hunting of exotic beasts, and the current king was no exception. Several suits of well-polished armor leaned against the impressive architecture, some ornate and some functional, grasping magnificent weapons. The floor was littered with hundreds of fine hides, from the fur of s'karas and rackleshacks as would be found in the hunting lodge of any noble, to the scaled hide of crystal dragons to strange, shifting flesh, hiding the polished marble beneath. Even the ceiling was covered with a thousand tales, of the brave hunters of the royal family from times before times to the present day, with roughly a quarter still empty, waiting for the exploits of future hunters.

On the far wall was a monumental fireplace, with a colossal humanoid skull on the mantlepiece, covered in rotting arrows and corroding swords, with a single, magnificent spear of unmatched craftsmanship sunk deep into the forehead. It seemed less of a skull and more like some huge, inverted triangle instead, wide at the top, pointed at the bottom, and with odd winglike protuberances jutting out from its sides like two bulky wings. Its features were the essence of the demonic; two jutting fangs, eye sockets wide enough to swallow a fist. Exactly what the skull belonged was knowledge that had been lost over the ages and was subject of much speculation by the scholars of the palace.

* * *

Should you ever happen to visit the palace, you will not find that trophy room. It's gone now. I know, because I was the one that had be burden with the details of its dismantlement and the destruction of every trophy in that collection. That room, and its skulls, had always frightened the Princess ever since she was a little girl, and so upon her ascension to the throne, one of the first things she ordered was that the entire collection be converted into a second bathing chamber. The heads and tapestries were to be thrown out, despite my protests that many of them were from animals that were no longer found anywhere else in the known world. Where it was possible, the bones were to be rendered down to make soap for the bathing chamber or used as char to repaint some areas of the rooms. The rest were disposed of in the general garbage heap and were free to be taken by whatever opportunistic scavengers desired them.

* * *

After what I deemed to be two hours of waiting eagerly, one of the guards led me from the trophy room to a metal elevator, where I went up several levels before finally coming to a stout balcony that allowed a grand view of the yellowish banks of smog. At each corner of the railing stood a large stone pot, in which were planted decorative plants and flowers.

In the center of the balcony stood a stocky figure dressed in scarlet finery who was dictating to another man dressed in the official black and red uniform, badged with the sunburst of the kingdom. The guard walked up and whispered in the second man's ear. The man the king had been dictating to excused himself and walked up to me, and it was then that I made the acquaintance of the chancellor. It was also then that I realized that if he was the chancellor then the identity of the other man was obvious.

The King of Oriana.

His royal highness was a tall, stocky man, brown churls extending from the back of his head upon which lay a gleaming circlet of gold. I didn't see his face just then, his back was turned to me as he stared off into the distance. I imagine if he had turned around to face me, I would seen identified the cool fury of those glittering blue eyes that he possessed. Blue eyes like I sometimes imagined the Creator having; unblinking, unquestioning, staring forever and seeing all and understanding nothing. I would have seen in those eyes the fire of passion, the regal dignity characteristic to the proud legacy of Oriana's monarchs.

I would have also seen the madness.

Perhaps if the king had turned around I would have seen all those things in those eyes and left that accursed palace, never to return, and history would have played out differently. But speculation on the might-have-beens is for the young, not for the old like myself.

The chancellor was also a tall man, tall and rail-thin. On his narrow face a pair of clear reading glasses glinted golden under the light. Instantly I knew that this man was the chancellor, to whom I would be apprenticed to, and eventually replace.

"I expected someone that was taller," he joked, shaking my hand. His long, slim fingers were bare, except for a single golden signet ring embossed with the royal crest of the Crown of Oriana.

"Can hardly help that, sir." I replied, ignoring the quasi-insult.

He nodded. "I suppose that we must work with what we have. You'll at least get more use out of the roll ladders in the records room than I do. Now if you'll follow me, we can get this over with."

The hallway to his office had the feel of walk-through sculpture. Everything was perfectly placed. I recall that the wallpaper had a rippling pattern of umber in wide vertical stripes, a very pale red against a dark blue background.

He led me back to his office where the interview process began.

* * *

I know that the office well, for in time it would become mine when I became chancellor. It is filled with shelves of accounting books, and they are all old and browning. Some of the books are held together with string or bits of rubber so ancient they break when they are touched but do not fall away for they have over the decades melted onto the book covers. Papers are everywhere, bundled and banded and boxed. Some of the boxes were falling apart, spilling yellow flimsy sheets that might be centuries old onto the floor.

The records are the Kingdom of Oriana stand upon those shelves and they are rotting at their cores, falling away in flakes, inexorably oxidizing, as are all the books, in a process so pervasive that one can smell it, a haze that clings to the books like smoke from a distant fire.

To organize them and preserve them is beyond the task of any one man. To even attempt to find order in all of that seems insane. I know. I've tried for years, but the collection seems accursed, mocking any attempts to collate its contents. Once I attempted to suggest to the Princess that perhaps the books could be transcribed to new ones, but she instead told me to …

I am sorry. I digress once more. You must stop me next time...

* * *

Sitting across from the chancellor - in the much the same way that I stand from you now, the first thing he did casually dip a finger into a snuff box of red powder. He closed his eyes in slight relaxation as he inhaled the fumes given off by the strange grounded herb.

"Would you like some," he asked me. That was the question in the interview, if I desired to inhale some unknown drug. To this I declined, to which he replied "A weakness of mine. It sometimes helps me to concentrate, and with this position sometimes you need anything that you can get."

The second question that I was asked was: "You have the documents that you were told to bring?" He sniffed his nose to clear it and replaced the lid to the snuff box.

"I have," I said, and withdrew the yellowed parchment carefully from my satchel. The chancellor took them, and after a moment of studying them, commented "You've gone to all the right schools. You come from a healthy linage, with no contamination in the bloodlines that I can see."

"You know what is involved with this honored position?"

"I have some inkling," I replied. "And might I say, I am honored for it."

"You will be paid a salary of one hundred gold at the first of every month. Though you might be used to the barter system, we use actual gold here in the palace. All our taxes and most of the tribute is paid using it. You will receive your meals from the royal kitchens, and you will have your own quarters here at the palace. Your duties will largely consist of aiding me with the tables of taxes collected and the distribution of resources like grain shipments and the granting of parcels of land throughout the kingdom.

"But you have also been brought here for another purpose, one that was not stipulated in your letter of summons." The chancellor paused, and said firmly. "You are to be the tutor to a special member of the royal family."

I raised an eyebrow, "I was indeed a tutor to many students when I was enrolled at the university, and I have no objections to continuing in this regard. Indeed, I am honored. But I am curious as to whom as I will teaching to and what you would like me to teach? Does the king now have a child, or does his mistress have a younger sibling?"

"No," he said. "I am afraid not. You will be assigned to tutoring the king's younger brother."

"I wasn't aware that there was another prince. I admit that my knowledge of recent events is quite vague. Did the king recently adopt another? Forgive me..."

"No need," the chancellor said. "You'll find many thing surprising here, and the existence of His Majesty's brother is a fact that is only known by a few outside of the royal family. He is kept, shall we say, isolated due to a complication of his birth. He is not well physically and even less so mentally."

The chancellor gave an involuntary wince. "Now if you will just sign right here..." The chancellor proffered a document with the terms and conditions of my employment for me to sign, which I did.

"I should like to see him," I said as I finished writing my signature.

"I doubt that you would say that if you knew what he is like, but I admire your attempt to feign enthusiasm," the chancellor said. "Very well. Afterwards I will show you to the dining hall and your quarters, but now let us go see him."

He stood up, reaching into the front drawer of his desk to pull out a ring of keys. In the same motion, he leaned down to the floor to pick up a lantern which he then handed to me.

"Let us go visit the king's brother," the chancellor said. "Let us go see the 'Duke of Zill.' "


	6. Grumper's Tale: Part 3

"Zill?" I questioned as we made our way down a narrow spiraling staircase whose steps were bone-white slabs mottled with with numerical symbols, and a railing made from linked stone hands into the deepest recesses of the palace. The name sounded vaguely familiar. "I am afraid I don't understand. Zill is that desolate region of territory beyond the chasm, the one that borders this very palace. The Impasse, I believe it is called."

"Yes," the chancellor said. "Zill, a land of stinking marshes, poisonous jungle and muddy plains. No one goes there. The Impasse makes that impossible. None that we know of have ever crossed it. It's too wide, too deep. No one lays claim to Zill. No one wants it. It's completely worthless and unsurveyed by any citizen of Orania. There are no surveys of the land, and there won't be in the foreseeable future."

"Then why do you call him by that title?" I asked.

"An old tradition," he told me, his voice sounding more hollow with every step we took down the spiral of worn stone steps, and the air was cooler the lower we went. I wrapped my coat tighter around me. The chancellor seemed unaffected by the chill. "The least favorite member of the royal family is awarded that particular appellation. A private joke that goes back generations."

"Why this sudden change?" I asked.

"To be honest I was going to tell you after you had met him – after I had seen for myself if you were up to the job," he said. "And it is a secret, not anything that we would like the peasantry to know just yet. But seeing as you have some royal blood in your veins, I think it would be alright that you knew. The king has chosen a wife."

"Ah," I said. "I understand why that would cause someone to rethink family ties."

"The king wants his long-isolated brother present to witness the marriage ceremony," the chancellor said. "He insisted that his brother be socialized so that he does not cause undue upset or embarrassment."

"The king's brother," I queried. "To what extent has he been educated? For instance can he read? I ask because it will help me determine what I am to teach him."

The chancellor tilted his head as though remembering. "Yes, I believe that he can read, and perhaps he can count his fingers and toes."

"Does he have a name? A proper name, not simply a title," I asked.

"If he did at any point," the chancellor said. "Then I was never made aware of it. He has always been 'Duke' or 'my brother,' when his majesty spoke of him. You are free to ask the king if you so desire."

As we descended the steps leading down into the lower levels, the chancellor eagerly explained the palace's different levels and layout. I felt then that perhaps he would have made a better historian than an administrator to a mighty and disorganized kingdom. He excitedly explained how the palace was anchored by thirteen subterranean floors, nearly half a mile of solid spiraling space that been literally corkscrewed into the mountain by some process that had been lost to history and did not adhere to any known architectural technique. The levels consisted of a vast network of passageways, crypts, waterways, hidden doors, prison blocks - all categorically dark and dank, and completely at odds with the riotous splendor above.

On a stone platform with a waist-high metal railing standing twenty feet over a concourse of roaring water, the chancellor and I passed through the reservoir that served as the palace's primary water source – all full of tanks that resembled enormous arcane glass beakers fitted with heater coils and pipes ornamented with large clock faces wrapped around their circumferences. I asked the chancellor to what purpose did the clocks serve, to which he replied that none knew, and the reservoir automatically heated, or cooled, or cycled upon demand, and had done so faithfully without maintenance for as long as the palace had been occupied.

After we had crossed the reservoir we came to an intersection of corridors, where in some areas, roots of great plants had wound themselves through the foundation stones, and twisted around themselves. I would pause to stare into gaps and catch glimpses of strange things, a shine in the darkness like the gleam of exposed gems, colonies of luminescent fungi, and areas where the complete ancient skeletons of thunder-beasts were imbedded and seemingly melded into the stone walls. In some places it looked as though the hallways were either carved from the very rock, or - impossibly - the very rock was trying to reclaim the hallways. At ends of corridors we passed not just dripstone formations but strange geological oddities, each unique in a skewed way.

Finally we stopped at a double-bolted steel door at the end of the labyrinthine passageways. Wordlessly, the chancellor handed me the lantern, and opened the door using the key. The heavy door groaned on its hinges, stirring up clouds of dust and a faint stench, a mixture of body odor, dirt and the dulled scent of waste.

I entered.

Unlike most rooms in the palace, this room was stiflingly close, as if it has not been opened in a

hundred years.

The cell was almost completely dark, the only source of light the faint glow emanating from a single window set in a far wall – a narrow opening from which a sliver of thin sunlight pierced it. Entering, I walked beneath the ray, and I squinted up, still amazed by the abundance of natural light that the palace enjoyed. To have the sunlight come in, I thought, this cell must be close to the edge of the mountain's surface.

And as I wondered why someone would make such a tiny window at all in the palace, I then noticed the window's shape. It wasn't oval like a viewing portal, nor was it square like those of the house of my estate. The window was an unusual shape, a design that I hadn't seen before anywhere else in the palace: a crescent moon-shape, facing to the right.

As my eyes accustomed themselves to the dismal gloom, I could just make out a bare wooden cot-bed against the left-hand wall with a filthy cloth as its only covering, a sideboard, a free-standing cupboard, a tiny table, a writing bureau and chair. There was no other furniture; not even a rug for the stone floor. No lamps, no other light source except for the crescent window.

At the time it made no sense to me. Was the inmate of this cell left to live out his or her life below the glittering splendor of the greatest of palaces with no regard to their personal hygiene, or the slightest diversion to keep their mind occupied? Was there no opportunity for mental or physical exercise?

This was cruelty. This was wickedness and perversity and an inconsolable way to treat a prisoner, no matter what crime they had committed or how dangerous they might be.

I then noticed that the chancellor had not followed me into that cell. I called out to him, but received no answer. I head only the dull pad of footsteps receding into the distance, as I heard the chancellor make his way back up the stairs.

It appeared that I had been left alone, only for that illusion to be shattered when I heard a low scuffling coming from one of the room's corners.

I was not alone. Not alone at all. Had never been alone since I had entered.

From one of the corners, a tall figure loomed. It had been there all along.

It was there and then, trapped alone in that filthy cell that I first encountered the Duke.


End file.
